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COPENHAGEN, LONDON, SAO PAOLO and WASHINGTON, D.C. - Against the backdrop of the G20 meeting in London, four bank workers from Brazil, Denmark, the United Kingdom and the United States gave a special insider media briefing on banking practices that are adding real risk to consumers and the economy.



A branch manager at Bank of America in Washington, D.C. (USA), a team leader in general insurance at Lloyds Banking Group in South Wales (UK), a teller at Banco Santander in Sao Paolo (Brazil) and a former mortgage consultant at Roskilde Bank in Copenhagen (Denmark) blew the whistle on increasingly irresponsible sales practices and pressure to sell financial products, regardless of whether they fit customer need or reflect their ability to pay. They also talked about how incentive systems to sell products can put them in conflict with customers’ needs and interfere with the way they deal with clients.



“Banks are pushing products to be sold. This occurs in many ways. For example, we sell value packages that include products that the client might not benefit of but these products are designed to increase the revenue of the bank through overdraft fees, monthly maintenance fees and transactional fees that the customer is not fully aware of when he purchases the product,” said the bank manager at Bank of America.



In the United States, workers often feel powerless to fight back because the finance sector is entirely non-union. Banks have capitalised on this by maintaining a hostile attitude towards organising and American bank workers fear retribution from employers if they publicly support unionisation.



The worker from Denmark focused on the need for more education and training for bank workers selling financial products. She said “I find the products that I am selling very complex. It is not a problem for me to understand them. Some of them are very complicated but with some effort I can understand them. But selling them to my clients and explaining to them what the consequences for them would be I am quite sure that they do not understand half of what I am saying. I think this calls for minimum standards of what we can sell to what clients and in what ways”.



Bank workers on the call showed that the industry is putting itself and the global economy at risk by focusing on the “hard sell” rather than providing responsible and sustainable advice and service to customers.



The briefing was moderated by the head of UNI Finance Global Union, Oliver Roethig. “Workers want to be rewarded for providing good advice to customers. What is needed is an overhaul of banks’ business model: we call for a business model which is customer- and long-term oriented”, said Roethig.



UNI Finance calls for a bottom-up approach to supervision and risk assessment. The argument is that a bank’s business model can only be assessed effectively if internal procedures and operational practices – including incentive schemes, remuneration structures and training of staff – are taken into account. This type of information has to be provided by front-line finance workers through trade unions and other workers’ representative structures since they are those operating on the ground.

UNI Finance, as the only worldwide organisation representing workers in the finance industry, can gather extensive information on the operational practices of finance companies and provide an inside view of what is happening in the industry.



UNI Finance also calls for the signing of charters on responsible sale of financial products by financial institutions worldwide. This charter should include information on the practices on the company’s policy on marketing and sale of financial products, remuneration and incentive structures, training of staff and financial education. This aim at promoting fair sales practices, bringing transparency to customers and encouraging a risk-conscious business model.